Comparing Carpathia And Thanksgiving

When someone asked about the Titanic, he said, “They should have put the men in the lifeboats. Men can marry again, have new families. What’s the use of all those widows and orphans?”, Carpathia, by Jesse Lee Kercheval. “I was saved from sin when I was thirteen. But not really saved”, Salvation, by Langston Hughes. These two quotes derive from two short stories by Jesse Lee Kercheval and Langston Hughes. Jesse Lee Kercheval teaches writing at the University of Wisconsin. She wrote dozens of books.” Carpathia” is a short story she wrote for a textbook called “Building Fiction”. Langston Hughes was an American poet, who participated in the Harlem Renaissance and Jazz poetry. ‘Salvation” is a narrative story he wrote to express an experience …show more content…
In this story, a young boy is taken to a revival meeting. In the form of compelling Christianity described in the story, as people prayed, and chanted, it was expected that Jesus would appear to the children, bathed in light, and they could consider themselves saved. Hughes felt that since he was the last one on the mourner’s bench, the whole church was just waiting on him to be saved. He also believed that if God had not punished Westley for lying in front of God then he could lie too. The 12-year old boy does not have a similar experience but he pretends nevertheless to be saved in response to the forceful peer pressure. When he returns home, he cries intensely for two reasons, the first being that he wasn’t saved by Jesus and the second, his own hypocrisy and lies. The main point of the story is to describe how his experience of being “saved” only caused him to be disappointed in himself. This also results in him lying to everyone, himself included, and his guilt for doing so. The failed “saving” of Hughes eventually leads to his loss of faith in Jesus. It explains the effect an adult can have on a child’s beliefs. Hughes’s interpretation of his aunt’s explanation was that he would literally see Jesus like any other human being. Meanwhile his aunt and the other members of the church viewed the “seeing” of Jesus as something spiritual and mental, meaning a close connection with …show more content…
For people who do believe in religious freedom, it seems unfair to force children to publicly prove their conviction of God, rather than offering them spiritual guidance and letting them choose freely without any additional burden. Hughes wrote “Salvation” as part of his autobiography much later in his life because perhaps at an adult age, he was able to finally understand what happened in this meaningful